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First, provide references that support this is the "establishment view".

Second, we're asking for your opinion. Three concrete questions:
(1) do you still maintain that the Nazis only murdered 6 million people?
(2) how many of those were Jews?
(3) what other categories of people did they murder?
And no long diatribes, just three one-sentence answers to those questions.

I am stating popular currency.

You want me to go round saying '15 million Jews were killed'.

Why is it important to you that it should be 15 million instead of the 'six million' usually quoted?

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

But, but - we've been assured by Vixen that Finland never went beyond the 1939 border, and that a "Greater Finland" is only a fascist pipedream. They would never do such a thing, least of all the national hero Mannerheim. Right?

The rabbit hole goes deeper. This so-called democratic government of Finland that never aligned with fascist thought and only just so happened to fight the same enemy as the Nazis, published a book with the title "Finnish Lebensraum".

A lot of that is post-war Soviet propaganda.

Yes, there were POW camps where prisoners lived in neglect. Look at the bigger picture of the Russian Generals themselves using their soldiers as cannon fodder: millions of them marched into subzero temperatures to fall like dominoes in Finnish forests. They were so hungry, there is even evidence of cannibalism by the Soviet soldiers.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

But, but - we've been assured by Vixen that Finland never went beyond the 1939 border, and that a "Greater Finland" is only a fascist pipedream. They would never do such a thing, least of all the national hero Mannerheim. Right?

The rabbit hole goes deeper. This so-called democratic government of Finland that never aligned with fascist thought and only just so happened to fight the same enemy as the Nazis, published a book with the title "Finnish Lebensraum".

Do you even read your own citations? That wasn't the Finnish title at all.

Quote:

The original title of Finnlands Lebensraum was Das geographische und geschichtliche Finnland (The Geographic and Historic Finland) but it was changed by the German publisher to fit more into the Nazi ideology.

Changes the context completely, eh?

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

Why is it important to you that it should be 15 million instead of the 'six million' usually quoted?

Not 15 million Jews. Stop lying about what we are saying. 6 million Jews, and about 9 million others.

YOU are the one who is insisting that it's important that "Stalin killed twice as many". YOU were the one who started this. This has been REPEATEDLY shown to be false, it has been shown that you are astoundingly ignorant about Nazi war crimes, and even more so about Soviet ones.

If the "numbers game" isn't important to you, then how about you stop lying, and concede that you were wrong and ignorant? If it's "popular currency" and not something you actually think you know, then how about a graceful concession and an apology for your obstinate dishonesty?

__________________"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy

Yes, those disgusting Swedish internment camps where the mortality rate was, what, 0%? Unlike the 30-50% rates of the Finnish camps Indeed, those vile, Swedish internment camps created in accordance with the Hague convention for neutral states.

And of course, those Finnish civil war camps had nothing to with those involved in WWII. Not like anyone was still around-

Quote:

Before the establishment of the Political Offence Court (Valtiorikosoikeus), more than 5,000 capitulated Reds were shot by the decisions of the local Court-martials.[8] The mass executions had started in February under the instructions given by the Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim.[10]

... oh.

__________________"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy

Not 15 million Jews. Stop lying about what we are saying. 6 million Jews, and about 9 million others.

YOU are the one who is insisting that it's important that "Stalin killed twice as many". YOU were the one who started this. This has been REPEATEDLY shown to be false, it has been shown that you are astoundingly ignorant about Nazi war crimes, and even more so about Soviet ones.

If the "numbers game" isn't important to you, then how about you stop lying, and concede that you were wrong and ignorant? If it's "popular currency" and not something you actually think you know, then how about a graceful concession and an apology for your obstinate dishonesty?

I have seen zero evidence that 'fewer people' were murdered in USSR under Stalin than Hitler's Third Reich.

I will carry on believing the old school establishment view until then.

I couldn't care less 'who was worse'.

Both Hitler and Stalin were scum.

Hitler was insanely cruel (yet the German people went along with it).

Stalin's murdered may have died more conventional deaths.

Indeed whilst Mein Kampf is an astonishing pile of ****, Marx' Das Kapital and works by Lenin, Bukarin and Trotsky are stunning academic political philosophy, so in a way, Stalin was even worse, as he cold-bloodedly ignored his claimed 'socialist ideals' and adopted the chilling motto 'the end justifies the means'.

Hitler was crazy but he passionately believed in his balmy ********.

Who was worse?

You tell me.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

Yes, those disgusting Swedish internment camps where the mortality rate was, what, 0%? Unlike the 30-50% rates of the Finnish camps Indeed, those vile, Swedish internment camps created in accordance with the Hague convention for neutral states.

And of course, those Finnish civil war camps had nothing to with those involved in WWII. Not like anyone was still around-

... oh.

Yes, it was a very dark day in history.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

Not 15 million Jews. Stop lying about what we are saying. 6 million Jews, and about 9 million others.

YOU are the one who is insisting that it's important that "Stalin killed twice as many". YOU were the one who started this. This has been REPEATEDLY shown to be false, it has been shown that you are astoundingly ignorant about Nazi war crimes, and even more so about Soviet ones.

If the "numbers game" isn't important to you, then how about you stop lying, and concede that you were wrong and ignorant? If it's "popular currency" and not something you actually think you know, then how about a graceful concession and an apology for your obstinate dishonesty?

For the record:

From wiki re Stalinst murders:

Quote:

In his book Red Holocaust, Steven Rosefielde argues that communism's internal contradictions "caused to be killed" approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more, and that this "Red Holocaust" – the peacetime mass killings and other related crimes against humanity perpetrated by Communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot—should be the centerpiece of any net assessment of communism. He states that the aforementioned leaders are "collectively guilty of holocaust-scale felonious homicides."[27]

Robert Conquest stressed that Stalin's purges were not contrary to the principles of Leninism, but rather a natural consequence of the system established by Vladimir Lenin, who personally ordered the killing of local groups of class enemy hostages.[28] Alexander Yakovlev, architect of perestroika and glasnost and later head of the Presidential Commission for the Victims of Political Repression, elaborates on this point, stating that "The truth is that in punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, and all the rest."[29] Historian Robert Gellately concurs, saying: "To put it another way, Stalin initiated very little that Lenin had not already introduced or previewed."[30] Said Lenin to his colleagues in the Bolshevik government: "If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of revolution is that?"[31]

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

It would appear that Vixen, like Jabba, has a policy of read it only the first line as the entirety. Colour me surprised. Given that I have family directly involved in multiple ways, I kinda know just a little more than Vixen does.Some of my immediate family were active counter-espionage during WWII. Vixen is proposing utter BS ideas. I had an uncle (great-uncle to be precise) whose job it was to find gestapo agents. What makes that interesting is that he married his Home Office counterpart after the war and moved to Kent. And this was a man involved with 1916 rebellion. The brits rightly knew that when it came to covert ops, we were fare more experienced than they thanks to the whole 800 years malarkey. This is why we have things like German Cemeteries. The crashed Nazis were interned for the duration. The crashed Allies were quietly handed over the border no questions asked. And what did the Finns do? aided with nazism

Why have you referred to Jabba? Please explain.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

The figure usually quoted is 'six million Jews', and that is all I was referring to.

I see no point in hyperbole. Let's state the correct figures.

Originally Posted by Vixen

I am stating popular currency.

You want me to go round saying '15 million Jews were killed'.

Why is it important to you that it should be 15 million instead of the 'six million' usually quoted?

No, I don't want you to claim 15 million Jews were killed. I want you to give a fair assessment of all the mass-murders the Nazis committed. And that's not just the Jews, and I've made that very clear by repeatedly asking which groups you include in your figure.

And with these answers, you make it very clear you only consider the Jewish victims of the Nazi terror.

You deny the Nazis also murdered, e.g., 3 million non-Jewish Poles.
You deny the Nazis also systematically murdered disabled people.
You deny the Nazis also systematically murdered Romani and Sinti. Remember the picture of the girl I posted before? That's Settela Steinbach, a Dutch Sinti girl who was captured on camera just as "her" train was leaving Westerbork for Auschwitz.

And I could go on. That is all also part of the Holocaust (in wider sense).

That makes you a Holocaust denier and a Nazi apologist.

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

No, I don't want you to claim 15 million Jews were killed. I want you to give a fair assessment of all the mass-murders the Nazis committed. And that's not just the Jews, and I've made that very clear by repeatedly asking which groups you include in your figure.

And with these answers, you make it very clear you only consider the Jewish victims of the Nazi terror.

You deny the Nazis also murdered, e.g., 3 million non-Jewish Poles.
You deny the Nazis also systematically murdered disabled people.
You deny the Nazis also systematically murdered Romani and Sinti. Remember the picture of the girl I posted before? That's Settela Steinbach, a Dutch Sinti girl who was captured on camera just as "her" train was leaving Westerbork for Auschwitz.

And I could go on. That is all also part of the Holocaust (in wider sense).

That makes you a Holocaust denier and a Nazi apologist.

What a poor quality shabby argument. Because I shan't be bullied into agreeing 'Stalin killed fewer people than the Nazis' that equates in your mind to 'Holocaust denier'.

Talk about a massive logical fallacy: disproportionallity.

It's as though 'Holocaust denier' is your schoolboy version of the nastiest insult you can dream up.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

Do you even read your own citations? That wasn't the Finnish title at all.

Quote:

The original title of Finnlands Lebensraum was Das geographische und geschichtliche Finnland (The Geographic and Historic Finland) but it was changed by the German publisher to fit more into the Nazi ideology.

Changes the context completely, eh?

No, because it doesn't change the contents nor the purpose of the book one iota: it served as a justification for annexation. By that so-called democratic government that according to our resident lying apologist, only wanted the lands lost in the Winter War back.

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

I will carry on believing the old school establishment view until then.

This is not an "old school establishment view" but something you made up.

I have given you current credible numbers for the bulk of the mass deaths under Stalin - 2-4 million due to the Great Famines, 1-2 due to the various purges. Why do you refuse to accept these? Why do you insist on exonerating Hitler and demonizing Stalin as much as humanlybpossible?

__________________"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy

__________________"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy

What a poor quality shabby argument. Because I shan't be bullied into agreeing 'Stalin killed fewer people than the Nazis' that equates in your mind to 'Holocaust denier'.

Talk about a massive logical fallacy: disproportionallity.

It's as though 'Holocaust denier' is your schoolboy version of the nastiest insult you can dream up.

Nobody's bullying you. Just asking to show your work. Apparently, you keep denying all those victims from other groups the Nazis targeted.

That makes you unequivocally a Nazi apologist and a Hitler hugger.

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

Wardens were instructed to ensure humane treatment of internees. All internees were forced to wear certain uniform and submit daily routines. Internees in Smedsbo internment camp had a typical daily routine of being woken up at 7.15am, they were then escorted to the dining room where they were expected to have their breakfast in complete silence followed by working passes. They were not permitted to leave their working station at any time. Jobs like road building, repair duty and woodcutting were commonly adopted. With one break for lunch, work proceeded until 2.45pm, after which internees were more or less free for the rest of the day.[6]

The inhumanity! They got three meals a day. And they had the afternoon off - what horror show!

And you want to compare this with the Finnish internment camps where the inmates were starved and the mortality rate was 18% overall and in one camp even 50%?

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

It is correct and proper that researchers should study and analyse the 'lessons to be learnt' about the POW camp conditions. I have a couple of these books myself, The Aseveljet book TubbaBubba referenced, Vankileirit (prison camps) and Etsin Turvapaikka 'I sought sanctuary' - Walter Cohen, about a Jewish refuge to Finland, and his dealings with VALPO, the Finnish state police, some of whom were secret Nazi sympathisers and abused their positions, as they did in his case.

Finns do not shy away from the truth.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

It is correct and proper that researchers should study and analyse the 'lessons to be learnt' about the POW camp conditions. I have a couple of these books myself, The Aseveljet book TubbaBubba referenced, Vänkkileirit (prison camps) and Etsin Turvapaikka 'I sought sanctuary' - Walter Cohen, about a Jewish refuge to Finland, and his dealings with VALPO, the Finnish state police, some of whom were secret Nazi sympathisers and abused their positions, as they did in his case.

So you very consciously lied when you disparaged my post as Soviet propaganda. Got it.

Originally Posted by Vixen

Finns do not shy away from the truth.

Then why are you lying your arse off in every single post in this thread?

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

So you very consciously lied when you disparaged my post as Soviet propaganda. Got it.

Then why are you lying your arse off in every single post in this thread?

You're lying your arse off. No-one ever claimed that POW camps in Karelia were wonderful, but I did note in British Library a lot of books by people with Russian names claiming ill treatment by the Finns in a POW camp in Karelia.

I couldn't help thinking it was communist propaganda. The facts may have been basically true, but the motive for publication was dubious IMV. So prisoners who tried to escape were shot.

That's how it was in war conditions. Officers had the authority to shoot on the spot mutineers and defectors, without a court martial.

POW camps were appalling throughout Europe - read how the Brits treated the Italians and Germans.

I read of a massive German POW in Kirkenes - the Germans deployed a naval destroyer to imprison deserting German soldiers (and there were many) - any further insubordination and they were summarily executed.

As Lars Westerlund says in your own citation, the persons responsible were brought to a tribunal for their crimes, post-war:

Quote:

On the initiative of the Allied Control Commission, eight leading Finnish politicians were
in 1945-46 tried and convicted to imprisonment for crimes against peace. These so called
war responsibility trials, which have been the focus of much excited attention, have been
the subjects of several books, research reports, and document collections, and the convicted
have been elevated to the status of innocent scapegoats and patriotic martyrs of the Soviet
thirst for revenge.

In the early post-war period, some 1,400 persons were tried by military tribunals for wartime
crimes against Soviet POWs. By the end of 1946, altogether 3 049 cases of criminal
investigation had been opened by the POW Camp Investigation Board, which had been
founded in the fall of 1944. The investigations concerned 4,177 suspected persons, of
whom 478 were arrested. 27,000-28,000 persons were heard during the trials, and
approximately 55,000 pages of records were produced during the proceedings. Typically,
not a single study existed until 2008 of these trials against genuine war criminals, convicted
in professional, independent courts; after all, this was an embarrassing and disgraceful
episode in Finnish history, which the national establishment has strived to belittle and
efface.

As a result of these investigations, 1,381 persons were charged, 723 of whom were
convicted and the remaining 658 released. Of the convicted, 107 were officers, 374
sergeants and privates, and 170 employers, bosses and civilians. It was established that the
convicted war criminals had committed a total of 42 murders and 342 other homicides.

Additionally, seven Soviet POWs had been shot on their own request, and ten POWs had
been maltreated unto death. There were 14 cases of caused deaths, 431 other maltreatments,
280 breaches of duty, and 86 other cases of crimes or infringements.
Nine persons were convicted to life sentences, 17 to imprisonment for 10-15 years, 57 to
imprisonment for five to ten years, and 447 to imprisonment varying from one month to
five years. Fines or disciplinary corrections were levied out in 124 cases.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

You're lying your arse off. No-one ever claimed that POW camps in Karelia were wonderful, but I did note in British Library a lot of books by people with Russian names claiming ill treatment by the Finns in a POW camp in Karelia.

Stop with your BS about the British Library. Nobody believes you.

And we're not talking about POW camps, we're talking about camps where civilians were interned. And not in Karelia, but in East Karelia, a region that had never been part of Finland, neither when it was, as grand-duchy, part of Czarist Russia nor when it was post-WW1 an independent state. And that region was occupied by Finland in the Continuation War, a fact that you have been denying numerous times in this thread.

Originally Posted by Vixen

I couldn't help thinking it was communist propaganda. The facts may have been basically true, but the motive for publication was dubious IMV. So prisoners who tried to escape were shot.

That's how it was in war conditions. Officers had the authority to shoot on the spot mutineers and defectors, without a court martial.

We're not talking about escaping inmates. We're talking about starvation.

Originally Posted by Vixen

POW camps were appalling throughout Europe - read how the Brits treated the Italians and Germans.

They treated them well. With minimal mortality rates.

And don't change the subject. The subject of this thread is Finland. If you want to discuss British POW camps, open a new thread - in the CT forum.

Originally Posted by Vixen

I read of a massive German POW in Kirkenes

Dicker Heinrich or something?

Originally Posted by Vixen

As Lars Westerlund says in your own citation, the persons responsible were brought to a tribunal for their crimes, post-war:

Because the Allied Control Commission forced them to.

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

Don't put words in my mouth. Germany and Finland were co-Belligerents against USSR. The Germans had a looney Nazi aim, the Finns had a gripe and wanted to claim back land taken from them (and incidentally, the USA refused to recognise USSR's 'new' Finnish border).

Why do you persist in claiming Finland supported Nazi ideology when they did not. In fact, Finland was and is a Western democratic country and is largely Centre Party.

So quit the schoolboy hyperbole.

If you can find me saying the highlighted, then I'll give you a cookie.

All I've said, repeatedly, is that the Finns were allied with the Nazis against the Allies in WWII - something you seem determined to deny by claiming that the Soviet Union wasn't really part of the allies - or at least that's what you seemed to be implying by limiting your definition of the Allies to the US and UK.

edited to add......

Even if the Finns really only did want to get their "lost lands" back (and in today's complicated world with its counter-claims over territory there are a lot of countries with "lost lands" with varying degrees of legitimacy to the claim), they allied themselves with the Nazis against the Allies on order to achieve this objective - something you seem intent on denying. Even the the use of the term "co belligerents" IMO tries to downplay the relationship like Finland was at war with the Soviet Union completely independently of the Nazi when in fact they were allied.

Just accept that the Finns were allied with the Nazis, that it's an embarrassing and shameful thing that they were (whatever the national creation myth says) and move on. The denial and downplay is starting to come across as Nazi apologia, not something I think you intend.

You are incredibly ignorant about military history. Britain declared war on Finland 5 Dec 1941. So in which way was Finland 'attacking the allies'? It was rather the other way round.

Hitler's Operation Barbarossa plan came into operation June 1941, and took the Soviets completely by surprise. [anti-british rant snipped]

So you joined the Nazis against the USSR (one of the Allies) in June, and you're surprised Britain declares war on you several months later?
And you have the temerity to claim that the allies started it?

Hint: 'Allies' does not mean 'good guys'.
You had your reasons to join forces with Hitler, Russia was a bigger threat for an independant Finland. It's unfortunate, but it was something you felt you needed to do. Every country has made questionable decisions at one time or another.
Just don't try to whitewash your history.

You are incredibly ignorant about military history. Britain declared war on Finland 5 Dec 1941. So in which way was Finland 'attacking the allies'? It was rather the other way round.

Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3 1939, so in which way was Germany attacking the Allies? Hitler comes out of your posts as a quite attractive person really. You reduce the number of his victims by a factor of two and a half, and now you are using a definition of aggression which 1) is absurd, and 2) absolves him of being the aggressor in his war against the Entente powers.

It is correct and proper that researchers should study and analyse the 'lessons to be learnt' about the POW camp conditions. I have a couple of these books myself, The Aseveljet book TubbaBubba referenced, Vankileirit (prison camps) and Etsin Turvapaikka 'I sought sanctuary' - Walter Cohen, about a Jewish refuge to Finland, and his dealings with VALPO, the Finnish state police, some of whom were secret Nazi sympathisers and abused their positions, as they did in his case.

I know, right? I don't think there's anything I hate more than having to defend Stalin or Mao from unfair demonization

__________________"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy

No, I don't want you to claim 15 million Jews were killed. I want you to give a fair assessment of all the mass-murders the Nazis committed. And that's not just the Jews, and I've made that very clear by repeatedly asking which groups you include in your figure.

And with these answers, you make it very clear you only consider the Jewish victims of the Nazi terror.

You deny the Nazis also murdered, e.g., 3 million non-Jewish Poles.
You deny the Nazis also systematically murdered disabled people.
You deny the Nazis also systematically murdered Romani and Sinti. Remember the picture of the girl I posted before? That's Settela Steinbach, a Dutch Sinti girl who was captured on camera just as "her" train was leaving Westerbork for Auschwitz.

And I could go on. That is all also part of the Holocaust (in wider sense).

That makes you a Holocaust denier and a Nazi apologist.

What a poor quality shabby argument. Because I shan't be bullied into agreeing 'Stalin killed fewer people than the Nazis' that equates in your mind to 'Holocaust denier'.

Talk about a massive logical fallacy: disproportionallity.

It's as though 'Holocaust denier' is your schoolboy version of the nastiest insult you can dream up.

No where in the post you are replying to here was any mention made of Stalin.

What was addressed was your unwillingness to admit that there were non-Jewish victims of the holocaust. You have persisted in that denial. You continue to claim that there were only 6 million killed, which indeed ignores the 9 million non-Jewish victims.

Someone who denies 9 million victims of the holocaust is indeed best termed a holocaust denier.

This fact has nothing to do with your claims about the number of people murdered by Stalin.

__________________"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Isaac Asimov

This fact has nothing to do with your claims about the number of people murdered by Stalin.

So let us look again at the claim that Stalin killed more than 60 million people

Originally Posted by Vixen

For the record:

From wiki re Stalinst murders:

In a discussion, started by you, about whether Hitler or Stalin killed most people you quote a figure of more than 60 million for Stalin's victims, and six million for Hitler. Although you say you don't really care how many Hitler killed. Now let us consider whether Stalin killed sixty million plus people.

On 26 January 1934 Joseph Stalin reported to the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party

Everybody says that the material situation of workers has dramatically improved ... But this has led the population to breed much faster than in the old days ... Now every year we have a population growth of three million souls. It means that every year we grow as much as the whole of Finland. [Everybody laughs.] ”
Combining his reports, one could have expected to have a population of about 180 million in 1937

The demographers expected about 177 million. When the Census count was made in January 1937

it soon became obvious that the final enumeration would be little more than 162 million people. The worst disagreement between the expected and the obtained data were in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, North Caucasus and the Volga region, the areas that were the strongest hit by the Soviet famine of 1932-1934

That indicates several million famine deaths, and additionally several million fewer births following reduced fertility caused by the famine and associated social disruption, including forced migration and exile.

That is the best measurement we have of Stalin's biggest crime. Millions dead on account of famine and repression undertaken to attain state control of agriculture, and millions more who might have been born but weren't.

However, tell me if Stalin killed sixty million in a few years, out of a total population of just over 160 million. Is that possible? No it's not. And your source doesn't say it happened! Read your own cited words.

In his book Red Holocaust, Steven Rosefielde argues that communism's internal contradictions "caused to be killed" approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more, and that this "Red Holocaust" – the peacetime mass killings and other related crimes against humanity perpetrated by Communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot.

Together, these people ruled over more than a billion subjects. Rosefielde is not saying that Stalin killed more than 60 million out of 162 million. He is saying that, world wide, Communism's internal contradictions caused that number to be killed, which is a rational statement, since the vast bulk of the deaths were not direct murder, but famine caused by a stubborn and erroneous policy of land tenure and agricultural procurement, certainly criminal in that it was pursued without regard to human cost, even when the leaders in question knew that it was having fatal consequences.

Indeed. I would guess that estimate uses high-ish numbers for the Great Leap Forward (massive famine fairly similar to those in the USSR), maybe 30-40 million. I'm not as well read on it, but it should be noted that as a percent of the population, it was less deadly than the Great Irish Famine of the 19th century (about 5-7% for the GLF, 10% for the GIF plus another 10% displaced). Amazingly, Mao remained incredibly popular among the peasantry; even those who had lost many family members seem to have felt that they were ultimately better off - although that should at least partly be attributed to Zhou Enlai et al. who wrested control of the CCP from Mao due to the disastrous famine.

__________________"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy

If you can find me saying the highlighted, then I'll give you a cookie.

All I've said, repeatedly, is that the Finns were allied with the Nazis against the Allies in WWII - something you seem determined to deny by claiming that the Soviet Union wasn't really part of the allies - or at least that's what you seemed to be implying by limiting your definition of the Allies to the US and UK.

edited to add......

Even if the Finns really only did want to get their "lost lands" back (and in today's complicated world with its counter-claims over territory there are a lot of countries with "lost lands" with varying degrees of legitimacy to the claim), they allied themselves with the Nazis against the Allies on order to achieve this objective - something you seem intent on denying. Even the the use of the term "co belligerents" IMO tries to downplay the relationship like Finland was at war with the Soviet Union completely independently of the Nazi when in fact they were allied.

Just accept that the Finns were allied with the Nazis, that it's an embarrassing and shameful thing that they were (whatever the national creation myth says) and move on. The denial and downplay is starting to come across as Nazi apologia, not something I think you intend.

Co-belligerent is the official term.

The word 'alliance', as I said, is all a matter of degree. You could say the UK was allied with Germany as per its Royal Family.

It is meaningless in itself.

Simply saying Germany allied with Finland to attack USSR doesn't tell you much about the inherent nature of the alliance.

__________________If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~ Japanese Proverb

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